As they made their final approach to the city walls, Hieronymus took Leena by the arm, helping guide her through the ever-increasing crush of bodies.
“This,” he said, “as I have said, is the city-state of Laxaria. We are now at the southern edge of the plains of Sakria. The Sakrian principalities—Laxaria, Lisbia, Hausr, Azuria, and so on—are among the youngest civilizations on Paragaea, going back only a handful of centuries at most. The majority of the Sakrian city-states were founded by humans of the type with which you're familiar from Earth, but in recent decades more and more of the older races have begun to migrate to the cities, leaving behind their hidden places in jungle, mountain, and desert, leaving the old ones to dream of lost days of empire while they, in their youth, try to better their situation.”
“This is a human age,” Balam said at her other ear. “Before the humans, the Metamankind Empires divided the globe amongst them, and before them ruled the martial Nonae, and before them the Black Sun Empire.”
“And now,” Hieronymus went on, “at the edges of this new-minted human world, still linger the older powers, in decline but not yet dead. Perhaps they bide their times, looking for a moment to return to power. The wizard-kings of the Black Sun Empire have retreated into their citadel city in the cold southern wastes; the Nonae patrol the eastern deserts in their small numbers, raising their children up tough and hard-edged, weaned on adversity. The metamen fight their internecine wars, race against race, tribe against tribe.”
“Those that have not chosen to follow the banner of Per and the Black Sun Genesis, that is,” Balam noted with evident scorn.
A heavy silence hung over the trio as they passed beneath the arches of the main gate, entering the city proper. A city guardsman, some sort of air-powered rifle slung at his shoulder, gave them a long glance as they passed by, but made no move to stop them.
“Be that as it may,” Hieronymus said, trying to brighten the mood, “Laxaria is one of the more welcoming of the Sakrian cultures, and is a pleasant change from the forest primeval.” He paused, and then added, his voice low, “But you should still watch yourself.”
For the man Hieronymus and his jaguar companion Balam this was a brief respite, a momentary return to civilization; for Leena, it was like stepping once more into another world.
To Leena's eyes, the city seemed like something out of the days of the czars. Hieronymus explained the surroundings as best he could—the people, the buildings, the conveyances—but after the green monotony of the jungle trails, she found it difficult to take it all in at once.
The honor guards of the Laxarian Hegemon marched in their rank and file through the wide avenues, escorting some minor princeling on his business, pneumatic rifles slung on their shoulders. Airships passed overhead, bound for the northern reaches of the Sakrian plains, or to the far shores of the Inner Sea. Caravans gathered in large squares, heading out across the flat lands to the other Cities of the Plains, bearing passengers and goods. Presbyters, cenobites, and mendicants wandered the streets, each preaching their own flavor of salvation, each ignoring the others. Temples, money houses, stables, and inns lined the avenues and byways. Near the city center stood a large theater, a sporting arena, a library—each larger than the last. There were mounted police on their patrols, and cutpurses and sneak thieves skulking in the shadows. There were men and women in every hue of skin imaginable, and small scatterings of dog men, laughing raucously. A figure with the body of a woman and the head and paws of a cat caught Balam's eye, but hissed with her shoulders arched as he walked past. In the shadow of a nameless temple, a bent figure with scaled, hairless skin, large eyes, and a double slit for a nose recited strange poetry, perched on one leg, while at his feet a smaller snake-creature with scales of yellow flecked with violet caught the coins tossed by passersby.
Leena, threading her bewildered way through this swirling insanity, had no choice but to accept it all. No longer could she question the reality of her situation. However she had come here, she was in a world not her own, and it was her most pressing duty to return home and report what she had learned.
“Shall we pause for victuals?” Hieronymus asked, pointing out a row of food stalls along a narrow promenade.
“No,” Leena barked, eager to press ahead. “Answers first, eating after.”
“Fair enough,” Hieronymus answered, and guided her by the elbow on through the crowds. “Don't forget, Balam,” he said to the jaguar man following close behind, “that you owe me a drink.”
The outlaw prince of the jaguars growled, low in his throat, but did not answer.
In the eastern quarter of the city, they came to the Scholarium, a large edifice surmounted by three domes. They passed through an immense oaken door, with bronze cladding, engraved with astronomical symbols and mathematical formulas. The air within was heavy with age, dust lanced in the air by shafts of sunlight.
Beyond the doors was a long arcade, hung on both sides with ancient banners. On each banner was embroidered an intricate symbol of angles and curves, a different one for each. Their meaning escaped Leena, though they reminded her somewhat of atomic notations, somewhat of circuit diagrams.
“My earliest tutor was an alumnus of the Laxarian Scholarium,” Balam said, his voice rumbling softly near her ear. “The Scholarium is given over to the study of thaumaturgy, the art of effecting change in the surrounding world.”
“What my heathen friend means,” Hieronymus added, at her other ear, “is that this place is dedicated to natural philosophy, what you might term science, though its practice and execution here might differ from that which you would recognize.”
An ancient, bent man wearing heavy robes and an unlikely hat ambled across the timeworn floor towards them, a look of inquisitiveness etched on his open face. His skin was the color of ebony, and what little hair he had was stark white, the shade of new-fallen snow. The ancient man spoke to them in a language Leena could not follow, sounding much like that which Hieronymus and Balam whispered to each other when they didn't want her to hear.
“This is the magister of the institution,” Hieronymus explained, after exchanging brief words with the old man. “The head man. He says he's happy to answer any question put to him.”
“Ask him, how it is you get to Earth,” Leena said while the old man looked on, smiling uncomprehendingly.
Hieronymus translated, her sentence reduced to a few brief syllables, and the old man held forth for what seemed an eternity. Hieronymus listened carefully, nodding and making polite noises when appropriate, while Leena waited impatiently for the translation.
“The magister explains,” Hieronymus translated at length, “that Earth is a quaint belief among the indigenous peoples of the mountains and jungles to the south and west, and that many view it as a kind of otherworldly paradise, to which the beneficent will go upon their deaths. The crude peoples of the city of Drift…” At this, Hieronymus paused, and shot a harsh glance at the ancient man, who smiled beatifically. “The people of Drift in the Inner Sea speak of ‘The Other Ocean,' a supernatural abode which parallels in many ways the mythical Earth, from which bounty flows from wave and sky. Among the Pakunari of the Ogansa Valley there is a religious doctrine which—”
“No,” Leena said, shaking her head in annoyance. “Tell him I am from Earth, and that my desire only is to return.”
Hieronymus shrugged, and translated. When he had finished, the magister looked at her with something like pity clouding his features. He made a sign in the air, muttered a few words, turned, and walked away.
Leena looked from the retreating magister to Hieronymus and back again.
“Chto? What? What did he said?”
Hieronymus looked on her with an expression torn between sympathy and amusement.
“Well, you see, the magister has decided that you are insane, and said a quick prayer for your psychic well-being before departing.”
That evening found the trio at a pub near the commercial district, where Hieronymu
s and Balam conducted a secretive meeting at a back table while Leena languished at the bar. The cheap spirits the barmaid poured out reminded her of the worst vodka she'd ever had, but it was slowly ushering her into a sense of numb oblivion, so Leena wordlessly motioned for a refill whenever her mug emptied.
She was trapped on a mad world full of mad people, with no way to return. Those back in Baikonur would never know that she still lived, nor know to mourn her if she died, her life reduced to a cryptic reference hidden in a file somewhere in the cold heart of Russia. Failures were not proclaimed, as they were not conducive to the general spirit of the Soviet peoples; so the populace would never know that Vostok 7 had ever launched, much less failed. It hadn't failed, of course, but succeeded beyond the chief designer's wildest imaginings; but only Leena would ever know it.
She slammed her fist down on the pitted wood of the bar, shouting a wordless howl of rage.
“What troubles you, little sister?” Hieronymus asked, sliding onto the stool at her left.
“She does seem agitated, doesn't she?” Balam said, easing onto the stool at her right. He motioned for a pair of drinks.
“And why should not I be, I think?” Leena snarled. “I am here, in this crazy place, with no way home, and no one knows the way home, so I am stuck. Should I not seem the agitated?”
Balam took a long quaff of the mug the barmaid sat before him, and swallowed hard before erupting with a roar of laughter.
“You give up too easily,” the jaguar man said, and took another long pull of his drink.
Leena, annoyed, looked from the large jaguar man to the slyly smiling man on her right, and back again.
“What is it you say?” she demanded.
“Well,” Hieronymus began sheepishly, “we never said that no one knew the way back to Earth. Only that most people don't believe in its existence, and that you'd find no answers among the learned men and women of the cities.”
“Chto?”
“I mean, in all the world, there must be someone with that knowledge,” Hieronymus went on. “There are whispers and rumors aplenty, out on the fringes, of those who know the secret ways. One of them must be true, it only stands to reason.”
Leena looked into the depths of her mug, the fumes from the spirit stinging her eyes.
“But how will I find them with this knowledge?”
Hieronymus and Balam exchanged glances over her head. The jaguar prince laid a clawed hand on her forearm, gingerly.
“We have no pressing business, at the moment,” Balam rumbled.
“Yes, things have been getting a little dull, of late,” Hieronymus said. “A proper quest would give my life a bit of shape, a sense of purpose. What do you say, Balam? Shall we help the little sister in her hour of need?”
Leena looked up, not willing to trust to hope.
“We've taken on harder tasks for less reason before,” Balam answered. “Which is not to say it will be easy.”
“Easy?” Hieronymus said, pushing off the stool and jumping to his feet. He mimed a martial pose, like a comic opera hero. “And where would be the fun if it were easy? If we have to storm the walls of the Diamond Citadel of Atla, if we have to scale the fire mountain of Ignis itself, well…” He tapered off, looking around the pub and realizing his drink had gone empty. “Well,” he went on, sudden inspiration striking, “isn't that better than hanging around here till death takes us in our sleep?”
“If you say so,” the jaguar man rumbled with an easy shrug, and turned his attention back to his drink.
Hieronymus dropped back onto the stool, and laid a comradely hand on Leena's shoulder.
“Little sister, tomorrow we will set off in search of safe passage back to Earth, so that you may fulfill your duty. For now though, if you please, will you stop looking so damnably depressed, and have another drink with us?”
Leena looked at the pair, one a time-lost officer from a capitalist navy, the other an impossible animal man straight out of her childhood fairy tales, and offered a weary smile. Perhaps it was the cheap spirits, but she was beginning to feel something not unlike hope.
“Another,” Leena said, motioning for the barmaid with her empty mug. “If there is a single thing the Russian understands, besides their duty,” she explained with resigned humor, laying an arm across Hieronymus's shoulder and another across Balam's, “it is the value of a drink.”
The next morning, with Hieronymus leading the way, Leena was dragged through innumerable market stalls and upscale shops and boutiques. Her ragged orange nylon oversuit was quite the worse for wear, and her two companions had insisted that she be outfitted with clothes and supplies immediately.
Leena was less interested in fashion than in function, saying that she could make do with Hieronymus's castoffs, but Hieronymus had urged that she should be able to blend in as much as possible with the populace. Not all of the Sakrian cultures were as cosmopolitan and welcoming of outsiders as Laxaria, and it would be useful to learn now how to blend in unnoticed with a crowd.
Leena was unused to the range of choices presented to her, and even more unused to being followed around each stall and outlet by a sales clerk, eager to meet her every desire. Even in the days before she wore nothing but uniforms—and she'd worn nothing but the standard issue for the Cosmonaut Corps, the Air Defense Forces, and the Red Army since she was in her teenage years—her clothes had been provided for her by the state orphanage, and they'd simply supplied whatever the markets had in approximately her size, usually shapeless dresses of browns and grays, and roughly made leather shoes that never quite seemed to fit. The dizzying array of styles and colors presented to her in the shops of Laxaria were almost more difficult to accept than the inhuman creatures walking the city's streets.
In the end, they found a tailor who dealt in functional items with only minor concession to the fashions of the day, and Leena was loaded up with a few pairs of sturdy trousers, a few long-sleeved shirts, a sleeveless vest outfitted with pockets and hidden pouches, a waist-length jacket of some sort of softened animal hide, a heavier lined coat reaching to midcalf, sturdy walking boots, and a pack in which to carry it all. Into the pack Leena transferred what remained of her survival kit, the heavy boots she'd cut from her SK-1 pressure suit, and her extra ammunition for the Makarov. She discarded the orange nylon oversuit, the gray-checked pressure liner, and the helmet. Connecting the Makarov's nylon holster to her new leather belt, she hung the pistol at her waist, and was ready for anything that might come her way.
Almost anything.
Hieronymus demurred initially, but at Leena's insistence he also helped her locate an apothecary, where she was relieved to discover that Laxarian society had developed sufficiently to have the equivalent of tampons on the shelf, so that she wouldn't be forced to make do with jerry-rigged sanitary napkins when next she menstruated. She bought the apothec's entire stock, and that of several other vendors they found, and loaded them in her pack.
Finally, grateful to have left matters feminine behind, Hieronymus took Leena to an armory, and with the help of the armorer selected a short sword the correct heft and length for her.
“You will wear this at all times,” Hieronymus said, sliding the blade into a sheath of leather and wood, and handing it to Leena. “And you will practice with it as often as circumstances allow.”
Leena accepted the sword reluctantly, and drew it experimentally from its sheath.
“I would sooner use Makarov,” she said distastefully, “if there is more trouble.”
Hieronymus went to pay the armorer a few coins, and then crossed the floor to stand beside Leena. “I have explained about the scarcity of ammunition,” he began, his tone cross.
“Da, da.” Leena cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Not to shoot the pistol unless in emergency.” She pointed with the tip of the short sword to a rack of long-barreled rifles hanging on the armory's wall, tagged with prices in Sakrian numerals. “But why not carry those, instead? They are rifles, net, erm,
no?”
“No rifles,” Hieronymus answered, nodding. “Which is to say, yes, they are rifles, and no, we won't be carrying them. Sakrian pneumatic rifles, powered by canisters of compressed air, fire slugs of compressed carbon, which are effective at short range, but which tend to be overly burdensome to carry for long distances, and are expensive to recharge and maintain. Good for riot control, but not a campaigner's weapon.”
Leena nodded. Sheathing the short sword again, she hooked it onto her belt, opposite her nylon holster.
“Understood. But if again I face a six-meter, clawed monster, I reach for this”—she touched the holster—“and not this.” She touched the sheathed sword. “No question.”
Hieronymus held up his hands in a sign of surrender.
Balam had secured rooms for the three of them at a tavern in the shadow of the city's northern wall, and near the tavern there was a periodic street market, where Laxarians and outlanders of all shapes and sizes jostled around closely spaced market stalls. To one side, in a small plaza, space had been set aside for street theater, and mummers and mimes plied their trade for the passersby. There were also dumb shows and puppetry for the children, to keep them entertained and not underfoot while their parents haggled with the stall vendors.
While Hieronymus and Balam shopped for supplies, looking for bargains in the market stalls, Leena joined the children in front of the puppet stall, paying careful attention to the simple stories and allegories, trying to learn more of the Sakrian dialect. She'd not had to learn a new language since Berlin, all those years ago, but Hieronymus insisted that she would find the language of the plains of Sakria surprisingly easy to learn. Simple, almost mathematical syntactical structure, the words composed of only a handful of phonemes.
After listening for endless hours to the chattering voices of the puppeteers pitched high and screeching, trying unsuccessfully to absorb the vocabulary and follow the confusing plotlines, Leena had come to the conclusion that Hieronymus was a far more skilled linguist than she. Or that he was having a joke at her expense.
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